Being able to make others laugh is one of the best traits that a person could have. Not only does it make you more attractive, but it’s even linked to having a more successful career!
There’s no downside to be hilarious but it’s a skill that, like all others, must be studied and practised. Most people will go through their whole lives never doing any research into being funny apart from learning from past jokes that did or didn’t work. This is fine for most people, but if you want to get anywhere in content creation, your own business, or a large corporation, then you should learn how to be hilarious.
Step 1: Understanding Why we Laugh
Comedy is subjective but the reason we laugh isn’t
We laugh because our brain releases dopamine. That’s it. So now it’s not a question of how to be funny, but how do you make the brain release dopamine?
Why the Unexpected Creates Comedy
Have you ever been unsure of what to do or say so have just nervously laughed? That happens because our brain is always trying to predict what will happen next, but the system breaks down when something that it couldn’t predict happens. Dopamine is quickly released to fill the gap which is why we laugh. This is why we find punchlines funny the first time we hear them but not on repeat hearings.
Surprise is the biggest factor when it comes to whether or not we laugh when confronted with a joke but in a more relaxed setting, such as a comedian building up to a joke that you can predict, it’s logic and emotions that determine the funniness. Studies have shown that the frontal lobe, the part of our brain responsible for emotional responses and logical thinking, is active when we’re taking in information. Without going into too much science, this basically means that emotional and logical thinking play a big part in whether or not you find something funny.
Step 2: Understanding How to Create Unexpected Punchlines
The best methods for creating unexpected punchlines is to take ideas to their logical extremes or to change the frame of the joke.
How to Take Jokes to their Logical Extremes
Taking an idea to its logical extreme will allow you to be surprising whilst also not being random. Randomness can work for comedy, however there must be a connection between the set up and the punchline.
Logical extremes work because it allows for the punchline to be unexpected whilst also making sense. People admire those who are witty, which is the skill of quickly making logical connections between elements, and you’ll gain admiration from others for using the same principles. A study by Scientific America found that the brain loves to learn from others and that dopamine is released when it does learn something. This means that you can make people laugh just by making a clever connection that they wouldn’t have thought of.
Taking ideas to their logical extreme is all about finding the elements of the joke that make the joke funny and then escalating them. Start by writing down your idea, for example “the manager was upset because I was late to work”, and then write down the logical escalations of that. For example, “the manager was furious that I was 3 hours late to work” to “the manager punched a hole in the wall because I was 3 hours late to work for the 4th time this week”.
Escalating small elements into bigger issues is the easiest way to create a joke. In the previous example, the emotion that the manager was feeling as well as how late I was to work are both elements that can be escalated or deescalated to create the joke.
How to Change the Frame to Create Jokes
The frame is the perspective of the joke, mostly who it’s being told from and who the subject of mockery is.
If we go back to the previous example, I could say “the manager punched a hole in the wall because I was 5 minutes late to work” which now makes the joke about the managers anger issues instead of me being late to work. This simple change has completely changed the joke to the point and it’s the exact same set up but with a different punchline. Think of it like how you might emphasise different words in a sentence to change its meaning.
One Liner comedians will take ideas to their logical extremes using framing to create punchlines that you could never even think of. They’ll usually do this by introducing a subject and then pivoting to a different angle for the punchline. For example, “What is the centre of gravity? The letter V!” (I got this “joke” from this teacher jokes websites, I’m so sorry).
This joke not only uses changing frames but also logical extremes. The set up implies something scientific but then the punchline deescalates things to their simplest forms. The word “gravity” is the simplest form of gravity which is the connection between the set up and punchline. There’s then a perspective shift to be about the written words instead of something scientific which is what makes the punchline unexpected.
Step 3: Understanding how Prompts Work
How to Use Prompts to Appear Hilarious
Imagine your boss falling down the stairs.
I have no idea who your boss is, what they look like, or even how you imagined them falling, but you found it funny. Better yet, you’re now associating those laughs with me despite me not doing or saying anything funny at all.
Just as the scene from Inception tells us, ideas that we create have a strong emotional effect on us. This prompt above is funny because you created the “scene” from all of your experiences. All I did was give you a small prompt, and your brain went to work creating it. You then associate those laughs with me because I was a middleman between you and laughter. In a chemical sense, I was the initial event that lead to dopamine being released which is why you also feel a strong emotional response to me.
The goal of a prompt is to create a template that the audience will then fill in themselves using their own life and experiences. The template could be anything, but normally something that’s relevant to them, such as someone they know doing x, will be funniest. You’ve probably already done this if you’ve ever talked about the people who you went to school with and what they’re doing for work. For example, Scott the nerdy kid now being a bouncer and the jokes that would come from that.
This is also how memes work since most of them will be based on an experience, such as working in fast food, which will then have an effect on anyone who views it. The idea is that I, who has worked in fast food, will see the meme, and then subconsciously think back to my times in the industry. If the meme is something specific, such as burning yourself on the fryer, then it will have a strong emotional effect on me, and I’ll likely engage with the post.
How Logical Connections Work in Comedy
As mentioned earlier, our brains are constantly working to make connections between events so we can learn from them. This ability to make connections can be manipulated using prompts which causes the brain to release dopamine as a reward because it made a connection. If the connection if funny, then that’s more dopamine released which will make the joke seem funnier.
For example, imagine you’re playing an online game with your mates, and you’re pinned down by a sniper. Whist talking about how to deal with this situation, one of your mates chooses to stand up from behind their cover and gets shot. Another mate then says “oh nice one JFK” which makes you laugh.
The joke here is that JFK was famously shot by a sniper and your brain will make that connection which then causes the reaction that I talked about above. Not only that, but our brains would have learned of a new connection (if the joke is new obviously) which then releases dopamine so we’re more likely to laugh.
Logical connections are the strongest form of comedy because you’re forcing the brain into a process that releases dopamine no matter if the joke is funny or not. If we go back to the example of Scott the nerd who is now a bouncer, we will use our knowledge of what bouncers are like to fill in the blanks. In our brains, that’s taking a “scene” of a bouncer doing something, and then inserting Scott into it which is not only the brain creating things but also making connections (bouncers behaviour to Scott’s face and mannerisms).
The best way to make logical connections is to read up, learn, and experience as much as you can. If you’re able to recall from a variety of experiences then you’ll have a lot of material that you can connect to.
Overview
Comedy is subjective, but the reason we laugh isn’t. You can make just about anything laugh if you understand why we laugh
- We laugh because our brain releases dopamine
- Unexpected punchlines will always be funny because of how our brains work
- Taking punchlines to their logical extremes will make them hilarious
- Changing the frame of jokes will ensure that they’re unpredictable whilst also at logical extremes
- Force the brain to make logical connections through prompts and references to be hilarious every time
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